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Rua Kēnana

Biography

Rua Kēnana

Rua Kēnana, of Ngāi Tūhoe, was born in 1868 or 1869. When Te Kooti died in 1893 he claimed to be the successor named Hepetipa (Hephzibah) whom Te Kooti had prophesied would complete his work by regaining the land.

His claims divided the Ringatū Church founded by Te Kooti. Many Tūhoe saw Rua as a symbol of a new era in which their lost lands would be returned and kept in their name. In 1907 he built a new religious community at the foot of Maungapōhatu, the mountain sacred to Tūhoe.

In 1910 Rua sold 40,000 acres (16,000 ha) of Tūhoe land for £31,000 (equivalent to nearly $5 million in 2011). He planned to use this money to develop his community at Maungapōhatu. He also hoped that roads and railways would make it economically viable. None of this happened. People in the settlement continued to die because of harsh winters, poor diet and poor housing. By 1913 Rua’s community had declined from 500–600 people to about 30 families.

The government was suspicious of Rua, and the Tohunga Suppression Act 1907 was aimed mainly at him. When the First World War broke out, he was accused of sedition because he had pacifist beliefs and opposed conscription of Māori into the armed forces. The government harassed Rua, using liquor laws to arrest him for selling illicit alcohol at Maungapōhatu. He refused to attend court, claiming he was busy with a harvest. Later he declined to accompany policemen who came to arrest him.

In April 1916 a large force of heavily armed constables was sent to arrest him. After a shot rang out two Māori, including Rua’s son, were killed in the subsequent exchange of fire. The historian Judith Binney stated that the police later manipulated the evidence to make it appear that Māori, planning an ambush, had fired first. Binney concluded that the ‘weight of evidence’ supported Rua and his followers’ denial of this version of events; in fact, one of the Māori who died might have been shot in cold blood. The way in which the arrest warrant was executed was later found to be highly questionable, if not illegal.

Rua’s trial in the Supreme Court was one of the longest in New Zealand history. Found not guilty of sedition but guilty of resisting arrest, he was sentenced to one year’s hard labour followed by 18 months’ imprisonment. The presiding officer, Judge Chapman, commented that Māori needed to learn that the law ‘reached every corner’ of the land. Eight members of the jury later publicly protested against the harshness of this sentence.

Rua returned to Maungapōhatu after his release in 1918. In 1922 Tūhoe exchanged 40,000 acres (16,000 ha) of land for a government promise to build roads connecting the settlement with the eastern Bay of Plenty and Rotorua. The roads were never built, although some compensation was paid in the 1950s. Maungapōhatu could not survive economically, and by 1930 most of the people had left. Rua died in 1937.